This invention relates generally to cable stringing equipment and, more particularly, to a stringer wheel and cable guide apparatus for maintaining a conductor cable, a communication line, or the like securely nested in the groove of a stringer wheel during stringing, especially when the cable is previously or subsequently at an angle relative to the stringer wheel.
Aerial cables are installed in many above ground applications, such as electrical conductive wires extending between poles or towers, telephone lines extending between telephone poles, fiber optic cables for data communications, and the like. Miles of these cables are typically installed by using motorized puller that pulling the wires from a spool through a series of stringer wheels to their eventual position atop spaced apart poles or towers. Each stringer wheel, also referred to as a pulley or stringer block, may define a groove or channel into which the cable is nested in order not to fall out and control over its alignment and direction.
Although the cables may extend for miles in generally linear arrangements such that a loss of cable alignment in the groove is unlikely, there are occasions when mild to sharp angles or turns are needed. The pulling of a cable at an angle to the stringing wheel increases the risk that the cable will jump out of the groove and completely lose contact with the stringer wheel—a condition that may require the entire pulling operation to pause while human effort is expended to physically realign the cable. In fact, a human line worker may have to be positioned at the location of the angled line to manually hold the cable in place—sometimes by use of a bucket lift or by climbing a tower.
Another troublesome issue experienced in aerial cabling is that roller assemblies properly positioned to maintain a cable in position in the groove of a wheel assembly may need to be intentionally moved or displaced from adjacent the wheel assembly so that a running board pulling multiple cables may pass across the wheel assembly without obstruction. In other words, the roller assemblies need to be temporarily or permanently pivoted out of the way so that a cabling operation can continue. Typically, movement of the roller assemblies has required a human to be hoisted into the air and manually actuate this movement—an event that can be dangerous, takes an inefficient and undesirable amount of time, and may result in damage to the stringing equipment.
Therefore, it would be desirable to have a cable guide actuator apparatus that enables one or more roller assemblies (configured to hold cables in the groove of a wheel assembly even during angular pulls) to be temporarily or permanently pivotally displaced from an immediate proximity to the wheel assembly so that a running board pulling additional cables over the wheel assembly is not obstructed. Further, it would be desirable to have a cable guide actuator apparatus that is capable of being remotely actuated so that a human operator is not needed to move the roller assemblies. In addition, it would be desirable to have a cable guide actuator apparatus that is biased to move to a released configuration immediately and automatically upon release of a locking assembly.